The Seven Keys
by Shoukea
Summary: A precanon story about how each of the heroes got the key that unlocks the secret part of New Olympia High.
1. Jay

wow I've been gone a long time. I wanted to write this before I left for the Honduran jungle but no luck. At least it's here now! It struck me as odd in Chaos 101, when each of the heroes just happened to have the key with them the day they were abducted. Not one was like "oh I found something like that but left it at home", so I started a fic! I love the title, so I feel like I might have to morph it into more than just a pre-canon story, so I don't waste such an advantageous title. I don't own Class of the Titans, that awesome title belongs to Nelvana, Teletoon and Stubio B productions.

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**The Seven Keys**

**Jay**

Jay moved swiftly, a small key swinging against his right leg with every second step. Recently it had seemed the only thing his mother did was encourage him to be less serious – wasn't that the opposite of what mothers were supposed to do? He wasn't mad at her, he could never really be angry at her, but he was frustrated.

"Jay, believe me honey I'm so proud of you, but you don't always have to take life so seriously; you may regret it some day," his mother had told him, with both hands on his shoulders and a look of exasperation and sadness, as if she were envisioning that hypothetical day of realization.

He thought about it again. Jay did take some things pretty seriously, but that was because he had to. Who else would? Even his mother wasn't always there when she was needed. He had to be prepared for everything.

Jay stopped. He had reached the edge of the dock he was walking along and now looked out over the crowd of white masts to the sea. He took a deep breath of the familiar air, with its tang of salt and lingering fish. Somehow this was the only place he could find release.

The sea had always called to him, even when he was very young. His mother had enchanted him with the adventurous stories of Odysseus and Jason, sailing across Greek waters into lands unknown where giant monsters and beautiful sorceresses lived. After those stories, he spent every waking hour staring out the one window that faced the sea or pleading for sailing classes so that he too could discover those amazing worlds.

That was his younger self. As he grew older, disappointments made him wiser but pessimistic. Not in every situation, but they made Jay stop dreaming and instead find wonder in phenomena like the cosmos – which were amazing, but proven real.

There had been two main disappointments in his childhood, both occurring in succession due to his first sailing lesson.

The first was the sailing lessons themselves. The camp his parents had signed Jay up for took place on a vast lake whose waters were a murky brown instead of the deep aquamarine out his window, and whose expansive width he conquered at the end of just two weeks. Jay's childhood heart felt deceived by the lake, which yielded no islands or adventures the likes of his mother's stories, and by the stories themselves, whose epic tales no longer entertained his betrayed imagination.

The second was when, noting Jay's sudden lack of interest in her stories, his mother asked if everything was alright. In one moment he spilled to her everything about the sailing camp: the lack of adventures, the absence of magical uncharted islands, the very normalcy of it.

Jay's mother had sighed when he had finished, quick-to-dry tears threatening to spill from him like his words. She decided, wrongly, that he was ready for his doubts to be confirmed and looked straight into Jay's young eyes.

"Jay, these are only stories," she said, throwing away the cheeky smile she usually answered with when asked if they were real. "Monsters and magic don't exist in real life, no matter how much you wish they did."

Jay hadn't wanted to believe her then, but as he grew older it was impossible for him to see how he couldn't. Everything had just been an enchanting tale from his heritage, but he hung onto the stories and portrayed advanced interest when he studied Greek mythology in school. His further interest and research just cemented the fact that, in entirety, they were impossible to be true, and Jay finally gave up.

Throughout all this Jay kept sailing, because he loved it, and because his instructor 'saw potential in him', advancing him and encouraging him even when Jay had half a mind to quit – that half brain never would have won, though.

Jay put his hands on his hips and inspected the boat below him. He was hoping to buy his own one day but for now he rented them for his daily sails around the marina, the small ones that floated beside every dock.

He felt almost guilty not having a lifejacket, but only the seagulls were there to scorn his infraction with periodic screeches. The wind was low, he justified, so he stepped down into the battered white hill anyway.

Jay put his hand down to support himself while he sat, but instead of rough plastic his fingertips brushed something cold and hard, that clinked as it skidded across the seat. Looking down, a small golden disc glinted up at Jay in the sunlight.

"What's this…?" he wondered out loud, picking it up and running his thumb over its raised surface. Turning it over, a curly J revealed itself on the other side.

Jay squinted and held the first side closer to his face in an effort to see the small details. The golden pendant hung off a similarly golden chain, though overall it was not what one would usually picture for a necklace.

It was heavy, and from the centre of the pendant sprouted a thin golden arrow, currently pointing to a symbol Jay recognized as the Greek letter delta. The whole circumference, in fact, was divided into 24 equal sections, each one labeled by a letter from the alphabet of the language his mother had tried to teach him when he was younger.

Jay poked the arrow with his index finger but it didn't budge. _Probably rusty,_ he thought, though the whole thing shone as if newly polished. He linked his hand through the chain and held the necklace suspended, so it spun and reflected the sun into his eyes.

Jay clasped it again and got out of the boat, determined to do the right thing despite the strange urge he had to pocket the shining medallion instead. It probably belonged to another renter who would be missing it, surely.

The planks of the dock creaked from his weight and years of wear as Jay clogged along its wooden surface. He stepped onto the graveled path lined with tufts of grass that the dock connected to and approached a small wooden hut, painted green and adorned with a large 'RENTALS' sign.

The hefty man behind the counter grinned as Jay came up. "Boat not up to your standards, Jay?" he asked with a chuckle.

Jay gave him a slight sideways smile and shook his head. "It's fine Joe… just, is this yours?" Jay held up the pendant and it dangled in front of Joe's scrutinizing nose.

"Nope, I'd never wear something like that," he said, gesturing to his girth with a laughing shrug.

"Has anyone else rented boat 6 since I last did?" Jay asked, just fast enough for Joe to give him a curious look before pondering his question.

"I only ever rent that darlin' to you," Joe answered with a kind grin. Before Jay could dig himself any deeper into a suspicious hole, Joe added "that's probably yours, and you just can't remember. People lose all kinds of things and find them in their boats months later."

Joe's look told Jay to just take the pendant and go back to the boat. Jay slipped it into his pocket with an absentminded, "right, probably," his mind already drifting to the sailboat and the water. He turned back to the dock and headed toward his craft. He had to get one last sail in before the race tomorrow.

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I hope that was interesting! I had fun writing it, trying to do a little character analysis. I haven't written in a while though so review! Tell me what you think, how I can improve, anything, it makes me feel important :P


	2. Atlanta

The second installment is up! Yay. Special thanks to my four lovely reviews (and reviewers)! To the questions of who I'm doing next, if you didn't get it from this chapter, I'm doing them in order of appearance in the chaos 101 trilogy. So here comes Atlanta, enjoy :) Disclaimer: I do not own Class of the Titans.

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**The Seven Keys**

**Atlanta**

_Beep beep beep!_ Atlanta groaned and reached out a hand from beneath the covers, groping the air until she landed on the snooze button and quieted her piercing alarm.

Leaving her hand where it was she sat up, eyes stuck in a tired lop-sided wink, and groaned again.

"Mornings…" she grumbled with contempt. Heaving a huge sigh she pushed her covers off but slumped where she was with early-morning exhaustion from the effort.

"Atlanta! You're awake! Come, come you need to get dressed," a wrist-grabbing, out-of-bed-yanking flurry of wavy brown hair jolted Atlanta.

Stumbling to right herself, Atlanta rubbed an eye with her free hand. "Mom… sleep…"

"I'd let you if I could Atlanta, but I've already gotten a call from your Aunt Bev saying she's almost here," her mother replied quickly, interpreting Atlanta's sleepy grumbles. "I know you hate this but it's only once a year," she continued, releasing Atlanta's wrist and habitually picking up the clothes littering the floor. "So get dressed quickly, honey, and come downstairs," her mother finished, heading out the door laden with laundry.

Atlanta sighed and took out a t-shirt. She never understood why _her birthday_ had to be the day the whole family got together. She was the youngest of three children and the only girl, true, but there were plenty of other significant days that would be so much more suitable for the cheek-pinching, noisy group that was her relatives. The day wasn't even made better by the fact that Atlanta might actually see her brothers.

Their arrival was always uncertain, they having moved south and east for university and being too busy to visit ever. Atlanta always made sure they knew when the family was getting together, however, and lived on the childish glee she got from the idea they might show up and surprise her, which they never did.

Atlanta's memory of her older brothers, 5 and 7 years older than she, were still ones of when they were young, she too transporting back to the age of 5 any time she thought of them. It would surely be a shock to her if they ever did show up in their adult forms, the tall city fellows they had become.

Atlanta slipped on a pair of capris, passing over the lone skirt in her closet given to her by a sadly misinformed but well-intended relative a year ago. That was another problem with relatives on her birthday: they seemed under the impression that she was a _girly_ fourteen-, make that fifteen-, year-old, which couldn't be more opposite than the present case.

Blame another thing on her brothers, but growing up with their influence and hand-me-downs inevitably turned her into a tomboy. Not that she would be any different with sisters, but one could say they sped up the process.

"Atlanta! Are you almost ready?" a yell from downstairs interrupted her reminiscing.

"Yeah mom I'm coming!" Atlanta replied, hurrying to pin back her fiery red bangs and tumbling down the stairs.

"Ah, there's my big fifteen-year-old," her father said, standing to meet her as she came down. "You know, for the 'fastest girl in school' you take an awfully long time to get ready," he teased fondly, squeezing her shoulders in a one-armed hug. "At least now I trust you're prepped for your big day?"

"I guess," Atlanta said apprehensively. Her birthday really wasn't that special. She had stopped planning parties when her youngest brother Brian started high school. With both her brothers gone, it became an awkward time for Atlanta and planning parties didn't strike her as important.

She had always been raised to know she was just as good at anything as the next person, so when the boys she tried to befriend – after concluding that the playing with dolls done by the girls in her class was not for her – shunned her and insulted her, Atlanta was indignant and friendless without her brothers. She had bested those same boys at every sport and footrace but the ego of a 9-year-old boy is an impenetrable thing and their ridicule continued.

Instead of wallowing in self-pity, Atlanta built a thick skin but a sharp temper and a mean punch in retaliation – something that got her into much more trouble than her parents ever wished. She still held those qualities and was quick to challenge anyone who demeaned her, or in fact disagreed with her at all.

"Oh and there's someone special coming today," Atlanta's mother said with a smile from the stove, flipping a pancake. "Your bubbie! She's coming with Mike and Carol."

Atlanta brightened. Her bubbie was one of the few other relatives who actually understood Atlanta's moods and was never short on ageless wisdom. Atlanta adored her as much as her brothers and relished in the half-dozen times she saw her bubbie every decade.

Atlanta sat down, still grinning, and poised her fork to lift up a piece of pancake. Just as she was about to jab her fluffy prey the doorbell rang and she slumped in her chair and sighed. She had almost forgotten the other relatives arriving today.

A whirlwind of children, greetings, crying, fussing, tugging, hugging, colour, presents, shouting and confusion hit Atlanta as she shrunk further into her chair with a slightly forced smile until people finally settled.

Indistinct chatter filled the room as over the next hour countless more people poured in until the whole group relocated to the living room for more space. A pale green room stuffed with colourful, off-beat sofas and paintings, it was the friendliest setting in the house for catching up and the opening of presents.

Atlanta, a little stubbornly, sat cross-legged on the floor after mild protest and was handed the first present, a bag filled with tissue paper that underneath contained a book of lined pages, 'to fill with her thoughts'. Atlanta appreciated the book, with its cover of pleasant nature scenes and its "100 percent recycled paper" notice on the back, but after about five more and countless other, less admirable, presents she was growing weary.

Finally it was time for the flat oblong rectangle from her parents, her last gift. This she unwrapped carefully with muted anticipation, because despite their teasing and normal parental nagging, they were two of Atlanta's best friends and their birthday presents never disappointed.

Peeling off the final coat of colourful paper and opening the box, Atlanta found a wooden bow inside and quiver filled with arrows. Looking up to her parents she squealed and jumped to her feet to give them a huge combined hug. Sympathetic lofty smiles were on every face as Atlanta sat back down with a happy 'thank you' and inspected her gift further, a grin on her face.

"So that's all then?" she asked with a hint of relief. But her question was answered when her bubbie, who had been sitting quietly in a large recliner, leaned forward and presented a small box wrapped in tissue to Atlanta.

Atlanta looked up curiously but took the box with a smile, startled slightly by its heavy weight but interested as to what it was, since her bubbie always gave her the most uniquely suitable gifts.

Ripping off the paper and opening the box, the curve of a golden disc caught Atlanta's eye first. Squinting, she tipped the box over and let its contents slide into her palm. The delicate clink of metal on metal sounded as a round golden pendant on a chain rested in her hand.

"It's a family heirloom, it has been in this line longer than I can remember," her bubbie explained in her thin voice as Atlanta turned it around and around in her hands, taking in the strange necklace's appearance. She was flattered that her bubbie would want to give her something like this, but Atlanta was at a bit of a loss with what to do with it. It was very pretty, with a thin arrow on the raised side pointing to a symbol she recognized as _pi_ from math class, and the other side with a curly A carved into the surface, but her bubbie usually knew that if Atlanta were to ever wear a necklace it would not be one like this.

"I would have liked to give it to you on your sixteenth birthday but I feel it would have been too late." Atlanta looked at her bubbie again when she said this, an unreadable twinkle in her eye as she finished: "It's for good luck in whatever you do." Her papery features creased into a familiar smile and Atlanta slipped on the pendant, mostly out of courtesy, but returned the smile wholeheartedly.

"Now I say you go out and try your new bow!" her bubbie said to the space, waiting for agreement from the masses. Atlanta's mother perked up.

"Oh that's a great idea! We still need to catch up," she glanced around the room, referencing its occupants, "and you can take your cousins! It would be fun."

At the mention of her cousins Atlanta's face discretely fell. The obnoxious brothers Bill and Charles were around her age but infinitely more annoying than anyone she knew and reminded her of the boys in her 4th grade class who had made fun of her. However, Atlanta did want to try out her new bow and knew they would keep their pestering distance if she wanted to take things seriously.

She stood up with her parents' gift in hand and smiled to the mass of relatives. Giving a gruff "c'mon" to her cousins, they got up despite the slapping fight going on between them. Mounting the quiver of arrows on her back she put on a cap and waved to everyone with another smile. "Happy birthday darlin'!" came some voices.

"Thanks everyone," Atlanta said, genuinely pleased at how the day had gone so far.

"Don't stay gone too long," her bubbie said, the strange twinkle back in her eye. Atlanta forrowed her brow and turned to the hall, wondering why what her bubbie had just said struck her as strange. Shrugging it off, she stepped out the door with her cousins in tow. She was ready for some hunting.

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So this one was longer, and I think the layout was a little more confusing... hopefully still entertaining! I don't know why I used bubbie instead of grandmother, I just felt like Atlanta would have a bubbie. And I know family gatherings barely ever get settled that smoothly but for the sake of space it's a perfect party world. Once again reviews are encouraged, keep checking back for the chapter on Herry :)


	3. Herry

Finally I've updated the Herry chapter! It was a little difficult, I don't think I captured him as well as the others. And Archie is next - that's a challenge. Expect to wait even longer for that, especially with school starting soon (tears). Once again thanks to everyone who reviewed, it always makes me happy inside to see the e-mail form the fanfiction bot :) Also, I do not own Class of the Titans, so sad.

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**The Seven Keys**

**Herry**

It would be hot today, Herry could tell, and already the air hung greedily on the green grass after the thankfully unseasonal rain last night. He sat on the peeling white porch, watching birds flitting through the early-morning sunlit mist with a far-off air and already sensing the change in the temperature.

He was accustomed to this; rising with the sun in order to work, or do another odd chore for his grandmother, or if neither was the case, have a fully proper breakfast before normal daily activities. Today was a complete exception, however, with nothing needing to be done until mid-day, and breakfast finished quickly. Thus Herry was enjoying the calm of the early yellow morning on the back porch.

Herry had always enjoyed just watching – sunrises, birds, girls – but his ability to find pleasure in the simpler things put him off as _just_ simple to his classmates. He was not the brightest in his class, Herry knew that, but his heart was in everything he did. This did not, however, prevent Herry's classmates from making snide remarks behind his back or, if to his face, using wit they were sure would go over his head.

The tone of voice and general gist of the insults, however, had still gotten through to Herry, but he took everything with a grain of salt and stood it calmly for as long as he could, until one day after school his temper got the best of him and he shook the main offenders' senses into next week.

Herry's inhuman strength, brought about by his hearty appetite and aptitude for farm work (so his granny reasoned), was not displayed often. Herry was as baffled by it as the next person, but if a need arose he was not intimidated to use it. After that day, all those who had witnessed Herry's feat kept their mouths as shut as possible – in his presence. The effectiveness of his violent tactics made him resort to them more quickly as he got older, and didn't help his reputation as a 'dumb giant'.

Herry got up with a contented sigh and stepped off the porch, striding through the soaked grass with what was almost a nostalgic air. The forest near his granny's property was lined with colourful wildflowers, and Herry stooped to gently pick a handful, heading back to the old farmhouse with a fragrant bouquet.

He reached the quaint house, with its white siding and green shutters, and stepped through the screen door into the cozy interior he knew by heart. A fireplace in the far corner, currently unlit due to the temperature, warmed the conjoined living room and dining room in the winter months. Off the dining room was the kitchen, lovingly adorned with glazed terra cotta plates and drying herbs. A door separated the kitchen from the front hall, the end of which hosted stairs leading up to the bed and bathrooms, and large windows everywhere lit up the house with the prairie sun.

Herry's granny turned from her rocking chair facing the fireplace as he came in and smiled toothily when she saw what he was carrying.

"Oh Herry what a nice idea!" she exclaimed in her unique accent, her small frame cradling the flowers as she went to put them on water.

Herry, having been raised by his granny, was old-fashioned in a sense, taught the morals of society through her reminiscing. His parents were dead: they had been gone from before he could remember, and from the age of 2 his granny raised him on her farm as she did his father 35 years earlier. Due to this Herry was always prone to small gestures like flowers, and his farm-boy charm proved him quite the object of affection in his early teens.

The absence of his parents hadn't distressed Herry though; his grandmother was a tireless, spirited woman who had kept usually good-natured Herry happier still with farm chores and stories of his parents. Even in the most awkward times growing up Herry never seemed depressed that he was raised by his grandmother instead of actual parents.

His granny came back from the kitchen, the flowers tucked into a large glass vase. "Herry, you should start in the garden soon," she said as she placed the vase on the table and assessed the day through the screen door.

"Yes granny," came Herry's usual answer, as he headed back onto the porch and to a small shed that contained gardening supplies. With Herry's help, his granny had set up quite a successful garden beside their house, full of flavourful vegetables and herbs they ate or sold. Today was the day for Herry to turn the soil in preparation for the impending seeds. He chose a suitable shovel and strolled to the garden, reveling in the sun.

Herry stood before the damp patch of earth like a giant and imagined proudly the last year's efforts. With a satisfied exhale he planted the first strike and upturned the first shovelful of moist dirt. The buzzing of cicadas and the smell of fresh earth took Herry back to when he could first remember working in the garden. His strength meant he could help his weakening grandmother even at a young age, and many reasoned that his good-natured attitude was from living such a simple life with nature, free of the stresses and pollutants of the city.

Herry continued upturning the soil in straight rows until he was back where he started. As he raised his shovel for the last time a glint of gold reflected into his eye and he stopped, planting the shovel elsewhere and kneeling close to where he thought he'd seen the light. Sifting through the dirt he'd just turned over, his hand brushed something hard which he scooped up and wiped off vigorously on his pants.

Sweating from the heat, Herry wiped his brow and peered at what he had found. It was a golden circle that hung off a linked chain, with strange symbols engraved all around an arrow attached to one side of the circle, the arrow pointing to a symbol that looked like an 'i'. On the other side, as Herry turned the heavy pendant over, was a swirled H carved into the flat golden surface.

Herry stood with the medallion in his hand and hoisted the shovel from the ground onto his shoulder. Walking back to the house, not looking where he was going he dropped the shovel on the porch and pushed through the screen door with a creak, still examining the pendant in his hand.

"Granny, who did you say used to live on this property?" he asked without looking up. His grandmother came beside Herry curiously to look at what had him transfixed, the golden medallion at eye level with her.

"No one extraordinary," she commented, craning her neck to briefly look over the pendant before searching her memories for something to link it to their house. "I've found other things in the fields before but nothing like that," she noted.

Herry turned the circle around again and made a pensive noise. His granny put a thin hand on his wrist to pull his arm down and get a closer look at the pendant.

"I'm not sure what it is, Herry, but it_ is_ meant for you," she said enigmatically, pressing it gently into his hand with a strange look in her downcast eyes. Herry furrowed his brow but pocketed the item. They both fell silent the air hung like a viel between them.

"Alright, well, I'm going to head to the store for a drink," Herry said with an exaggerated breath, breaking the mysterious feeling that had enveloped the room. "All this hard work has made me thirsty for a slush."

His granny, acting as if Herry had just asked about previous tenants and the last minute had not happened, nodded and waved him off. "Have fun dear. Come back quickly," she said as Herry smiled and headed out the door.

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And Herry is done. Keep up your lovely reviews please :) I will try to write Archie's fairly quickly! PS I know the director posted some line drawings of the pendants, but I've kept 'my' design for the sake of the story. If only he'd posted them sooner.


	4. Archie

Woohoo I'm done Archie's chapter! I enjoyed writing this, even though I feel it reads a little awkwardly and he's not described exactly as I intended. That's okay, I'm pretty proud since Archie's a tricky character, and I got this written faster than I'd aniticipated. As always I don't know Class of the Titans.

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**The Seven Keys**

**Archie**

The rain was coming hard. He could see it sliding across his window and hear its persistent hammering against the roof, fluctuating every time the wind blew.

Archie was at his desk, watching the dancing symphony that was playing against the glass. He turned back to the paper on the table and wrote a line in a scrawling hand:

_Against my window battles savage rain_

He read it again and crossed out the words, adding a seventh to the group of inky rejects.

Archie looked out the window again and let out a self-deprecating laugh which sounded more like a hmph. His poetry was becoming so angstily cliché but he couldn't seem to get out of it.

He leaned back on his chair, teetering on the two hind legs, and stared blankly at the ceiling, letting the hammering for the water fill his murky room. From downstairs the drone of a vacuum challenged the rain for Archie's subconscious. His mother, a thin, obsessive-compulsive woman, always took dreary days as a sign to clean the house, and would only stop once the weather changed. During the loudest storms she vacuumed, which irked Archie because he reveled in the uncontested growls of the sky and the lashing of the rain.

He let his chair fall forward with a thump and rested his elbows on his desk, staring again at the piece of paper there, though his mind was caught up in the steady pounding on his roof.

He had once been described as fearless by one of his classmates, although a more appropriate word would have been gutsy, and Archie couldn't understand it: despite his love of rain, it was only when he was indoors. Even a moderate rain falling on Archie made him antsy. Thunderstorms meant feigned illness just to avoid going outside in the water. It was his only fear and he'd had it since he could remember.

No matter how many "face your fear" courses his mother signed him up for, they were always unsuccessful, probably because the first step of overcoming a phobia is to know its origin, and for the life of him Archie could not remember when this fear of water had begun. His parents couldn't help either, because before he could even talk Archie would cry during every bath and never, ever swim when the chance arose. Archie made it a point to tell only his closest friends about this fear, and made up excuses to avoid swimming in PE.

Archie stood and started pacing absentmindedly, trying to shake the feeling of foreboding he got if he thought too long about water. Every second step came down heavier, though Archie had learned to control it for the most part and paid no heed as he wandered his dim room.

Another inexplicable disability from before he could remember, Archie had a golden brace on his right leg covering from his ankle to just below his knee. Every time he grew, his worried mother, ignoring the cost, got him fashioned a new one.

When Archie first began to walk, later than most children, he could barely move his right leg due to the weight of the brace. His mother insisted, against the urge of Archie's father, to keep the brace on him and make Archie learn to walk with it on, because the tendon weakness in that heel would otherwise render him virtually immobile.

His mother's worry for Archie's safety led her to incessantly dote upon him, even once he was well past the age of exceptional motherly care. When Archie was old enough to realize his mother was obsessively babying him, he became defiant. He could look after himself, and it infuriated him that his mother didn't think so.

The premature rebellion brought on by this treatment, added with the tough, brooding face Archie adopted later to avert ridicule from any classmates, gradually embedded itself into his personality and by age 12 he was a stand-offish, reclusive young man who was avoided, despised or idolized for his sharp attitude.

Aside from younger, awe-struck taggers-on, Archie was thus a loner in his class. He made no effort to get along, however, giving quick, final answers to possible conversation starters. People began to assume he just liked being alone, and kept their distance.

A few years later the rebellion did not only diffuse itself further into his personality but into his appearance as well. Archie had bought bright purple hair dye from a drugstore and one night, after another meek pleading his mother to "be more like a normal boy, and be careful for your ankle" that finally pushed him over the edge of frustration, he cut his hair into a rudimentary faux-hawk and soaked it in the offensive liquid without a moment's hesitation. Archie knew his mother would be devastated – she primped and adored his wavy copper hair almost as much as she worried over his ankle and attitude. The next day at school he could feel people's intrigued stares that never met his eyes, and he hid his smug expression at the back of the room with crossed arms and an unnoticing air. Later, whenever the dye began to fade, he re-coloured his hair until people forgot he was ever an original auburn.

That time was when Archie had started to get into poetry and classical literature. He had a lot of time alone, and chose to spend it in the muffled, secluded library reading the tragedies of Hamlet and Romeo.

Despite his rude demeanor, somehow Archie was tamed by the melancholy prose of the lovelorn Othello or the deranged Macbeth, and his attitude was softened slightly for it. Inspired, he began to write poetry of his own, to vent any feelings he had onto paper, intended for no one but his lamplight.

Once he discovered classical Greek epics, he was even more irreversibly hooked. Archie felt a strange connection to the heroes of the stories, and had snuck out of the house to buy his own copies of the books that now lived hidden in the lowest realms of his bookshelf. He would never have borrowed them from the library because he knew he would read them to ruin, not return them, or be found out.

_Above all_ he could not have been found out, so to save his reputation and not please his mother with the knowledge that he was interested in something "above himself" he kept his reading hidden. Thus the darkest corners of his shelves were piled high with the broken spines of his favourite books, hidden from the hopeful glances of his mother for some sign of docility.

Archie stopped his pacing and knelt beside his bed, searching the shadows of a large wooden unit for a recent though already tattered purchase. He had seen this book in a small bookstore and bought it without hesitation, knowing it would help inspire him in writing, which it had.

He pulled out _The Book of Greek Verse _carefully and was about to open it to a random page when a heavy object fell out and onto the floor with a clink. In the dim light of his room he could see a few yellow gleams off what he determined to be a gold disc on a thick chain.

Archie scooped up the item and brought it to his desk along with the book. Laying the book under the light, Archie placed the token atop that and peered at it through the yellow glow of the lamp smudged with the blue from the rain-spattered window.

It was a golden medallion on a linked chain, flat on one side and raised on the other. The raised side, glinting at Archie now, was almost pyramidal, with the point sprouting a golden arrow that aligned with what he recognized as _rho_, the greek r that looked like a P. The whole pendant was encircled with letters from the Greek alphabet, and the cover of his book was framed the same way.

Archie did a double take and looked again at the border that traced the edge of the book's cover. In each of the corners was a picture of a golden circle with an arrow budding from its midpoint, pointing towards the title. His eyes darted between the strange relic he had just found and its miniscule clones nestled in the corners of his tome. Why had he never noticed either of these before?

He lifted up the pendant by its chain, the flat side twisting its elegant A into view. Archie squinted his eyes in skepticism before decidedly slipping the medallion into a large purple duffel bag filled with extra clothes and a notebook. Going for a jog would help clear his head, and by now the rain had settled to a gentle patter.

Slinging the bag over his shoulder, Archie headed down the stairs swiftly into the sickening smell of pine sol. The buzz of his mother's vacuum echoed in his ears, now at full amplitude without opposition from the rain. Archie paused at the door and knocked his right heel inattentively on the floor as he usually did when thinking something over. Twisting the knob, he turned and yelled "Mom I'm going for a run" over his shoulder, and stepped out the door without waiting for a reply.

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Okay so it's twelve at night and this is my second version because I stupidly deleted the first document, so any little mistakes I'm sorry for, I'd already read it over about five times before I lost it. Gah. But Odie's next, getting close to finishing! Although I also want to continue my fic "Song Stories" so I may not update Odie for a while. A little endnote about Archie tapping his heel: I know he doesn't do it in the show, but I also know that when I have a bracelet or something on I always fiddle with it or tap it against thigs, so I figured Archie'd develop a similar habit with his brace. Like biting the end of a pencil. Anways to reiterate what I say every chapter: review please, because it makes me warm and fuzzy inside :D (...even if it's concrit). Yay


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